


a perfect storm swallowing over

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: I'll write something fluffy next I promise, M/M, Post-Canon, Spells Used In Ways That Would Probably Make Their Creators Blush, Therapeutic Bloodplay, but seriously proooobably don't read this if you're not a fan of blood?, shut up that's totally a thing, this just kinda happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:02:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10281680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: This was meant as an offensive spell, Percival had said the first time, when he’d demonstrated on himself, bright beads of blood appearing as he drew the wand-tip across his own arm,but there have been witches and wizards using it this way for a long time. It requires a great deal more finesse to cast this way. This is one of those lessons you would not have had at Ilvermorny. Privileges of having a private tutor who adores you.Adores, he’d said, and hadn’t even laughed or smiled to indicate there might be a joke in at all.  Credence had forgotten to breathe, had missed half the lesson in stunned silence.He knew the word well by now.  He said the spell under his breath, focusing his mind on the difference he needed to hold there- tohurtbut notharm. Not in any way that was not welcome and wanted, not in any way he could not heal afterwards.He let the wand move the last hair’s-breadth down and touch Percival’s skin.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrHannibalLecterMD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrHannibalLecterMD/gifts).



> “It’ll be fun,” Slippy said. 
> 
> “I’ll write like two hundred words of fluffy bloodplay for a new fandom as requested,” Slippy said. 
> 
> _Did you mean: 1500 words of Credence having a lot of feelings about bloodletting as a means of control over his very literal inner demons?_ , Slippy’s brain said.
> 
> “NO I DID NOT,” Slippy said, and yet it was too late, her brain had done the thing.
> 
> WHY AM I LIKE THIS, WHY DO YOU ALL TEMPT ME WITH THESE PROMPTS WHEN YOU KNOW I AM LIKE THIS.
> 
> Ahem. Anyway. Just consider this a couple of years post-canon, when the proper Mr. Graves and Credence, who is healing and learning magic but still wrestling with the Obscurus he contains, are mostly getting along pretty well but sometimes Credence has some stuff to work out. Percival's okay being the canvas for that. Literally or figuratively, whatever it takes.
> 
> Hi, new fandom. Sorry about the unbeta-ed bloody mess. Next time I'll write you something that's fluffy and that's actually edited and perhaps even not-speed-written.

“There’s not enough time,” Credence said, as his hand wavered.  Or at least he thought he’d said it.  Possibly he only thought it and Percival had plucked the thought from his head.

( _Percival_ , he’d said, that first time he’d let Credence come to his home. _Percy if you’re ever really mad at me. Mr. Graves at work, if you must, but not at home. Please._ )

“There’s time, if you breathe and don’t rush.”  

 _That doesn’t make any sense_ Credence said or thought, but he felt his mouth flicker into a tiny involuntary twitch of a smile even as he did.  Of course it made sense for Percival, who seemed to reorder time and space not so much with magic, but with the simpler and rarer power of simply expecting everyone to fall into line for him.

And everyone _did_. 

Credence did.

He rather suspected that was common knowledge by now. Percival had made no particular secret of moving Credence into his home, or of Credence’s progress as his student. He’d declined to confirm or deny any of the more salacious rumors, as far as Credence knew.   _They’re going to think whatever they’re going to think_ , he’d said early on. _So let them. I think it might do you some good to stop caring what other people think about you for a while_.

Credence tried, he did, but he couldn’t entirely stop caring.  He’d learned to find some amusement in it, though, after a time.  To at least try to imagine what it was they _did_ think and whether there was anyone anywhere in the department who thought the two of them were this.

 _This:_  Percival stretched long and easy for him, half-dressed where he’d started to prepare for the day before he’d realized it was one of those mornings where Credence had woken up shaking out of his skin with the dark things coiling underneath it.

 _This:_ Credence’s wand poised just so under Percival’s ribcage, wavering slightly as Credence tried to breathe and not rush.  (It had been a blade, at first, before either of them trusted Credence’s new wand-work enough with this. It still was a blade, sometimes, when this sort of play was a mutual indulgence and not a _need_.)

 _This:_ Modesty and her new foster family to meet for lunch, and Percival’s work waiting, and Credence’s potion studies fallen behind, and none of it mattering just now when Credence _needed_ , this way.

Credence had felt it boiling under his skin from the moment he woke: the dark thing that lived there and should have killed itself and him with it by now. They were taming it bit by bit, each charm and transfiguration learned a clawing-back of his power into something he could name and use.  But there was still so much left wild and so much harm it could use his hands to do, and sometimes he woke up utterly certain that he would never master it.  It would break him, and the world with him, if he couldn’t find a way to contain and channel it, and time was so short –

Percival’s voice cut into his spiralling thoughts, clear and firm.

“Credence. Go on. There’s time if you start now.”

He took a deep breath, and he steadied his wand, and he began.

 _This was meant as an offensive spell_ , Percival had said the first time, when he’d demonstrated on himself, bright beads of blood appearing as he drew the wand-tip across his own arm, _but there have been witches and wizards using it this way for a long time. It requires a great deal more finesse to cast this way. This is one of those lessons you would not have had at Ilvermorny. Privileges of having a private tutor who adores you._

 _Adores_ , he’d said, and hadn’t even laughed or smiled to indicate there might be a joke in at all.  Credence had forgotten to breathe, had missed half the lesson in stunned silence.

He knew the word well by now.  He said the spell under his breath, focusing his mind on the difference he needed to hold there- to _hurt_ but not _harm._ Not in any way that was not welcome and wanted, not in any way he could not heal afterwards.  

He let the wand move the last hair’s-breadth down and touch Percival’s skin.

The red line of Percival opening for him wavered only slightly and then steadied as Credence cut a steady wound across Percival’s chest, as he fell into it - himself, and Percival, and the magic that flowed through his wand.  The spell they all made together. Credence’s magic directed, and controlled, and doing exactly as he told it to do.

Percival’s breath at the first cut was sharp but then he held steady too, chest rising and falling with fast, even breaths, one hand at rest against Credence’s thigh.  

“Good,” he said, and “you’re doing fine, just go slow,” and just once, a soft, round _oh_ that wasn’t about instructing or guiding Credence at all, but just reminding him that there was a _reason_ Percival knew this spell could be used this way.  That he _liked_ it maybe even as much as Credence did.  Liked the bright red smear of his own blood between them or on the sheets or sometimes the inside of a shirt-sleeve when he’d declined to heal the marks Credence made on him before going out.

( _I felt it all day and thought of you every time_ , he’d said, and Credence had blushed and stammered and worried about the laundry in a panic.  Later he’d insisted on magicking that shirt clean on his own instead of giving it to the house-elves, so they wouldn’t be scandalized.)

Time stretched, slow-sweet as taffy. Maybe Percival was doing something about that because surely it should have taken longer than it did tocarve four curving lines into Percival’s skin.  It didn’t matter.  Percival was stretching the time out, or he wasn’t, and that wasn’t Credence’s concern - all he had to do was cut slow and steady, and watch, each drop of spilled blood reminding himself and the thing that lived inside him that he was in command of it.  He could use it like this, to bring only wanted pain and only blood that was freely given.  

 _Go back to sleep_ , he thought to the thing that dwelled in his bones. _I’m stronger than you today. Look what I can do._

Near the end of the fourth cut he finally felt it go: a shiver through him like something breaking inside where nothing should be that fragile.  Back to sleep; back to whatever shadowed corner of his soul it lived in on the days when it didn’t rush sour-sharp-sweet through his blood.

The instant it was gone he let the spell shatter.  The wand fell, and him with it, scoured clean and bright inside in the wake of the dark thing’s passage through him.  It left him shining and new, even with blood on his hands and lips, where he’d bent to touch and taste.  

Percival caught him, hissing only a little at the scrape of Credence’s shirt against the cuts on his skin.  Held him for long minutes and said _you’re all right now_  and _shhhh_ , and Credence didn’t feel as if he were crying, but Percival only ever said _let it out, now_ when he cried, so perhaps he was, after all.

(Credence had read about this sort of thing, he wasn’t a _child_ , and he knew he was supposed to be the one taking care of Percival, afterwards.  He wasn’t supposed to fall apart so uselessly.  When he’d brought it up once, halting, Percival had said _we take care of each other_  as firmly as if that answered the question entirely. Perhaps it had.)

Sometimes they brought each other off afterwards, hands or mouths and a sort of rutting desperation that the sight of Percival’s blood seemed to bring out in Credence. (And oh, thank goodness _that_ was a new discovery.  It might have been one secret too many to keep in Mary Lou Barebone’s home, he might have simply burned up from the shame of it had he known sooner.  Percival might never have found him; they might never have rescued each other.)

But today, no matter what Percival had done to time, there still wasn’t enough of it for more than kissing and calming, and promises of   _later_. There was a rush, afterwards - Percival’s new wounds to heal (reverently, checked and double-checked to be sure), clothes to be scoured and unwrinkled, the gifts for Modesty to be gathered.

Of course, they were late.  Of course, Percival swept in as if he were on time, and everyone else adjusted themselves to make it seem as if that were so.  

Percival led, and Credence followed loaded down with Modesty’s gifts, and that was right and good and just as it should be, in the eyes of the world.

And if Credence waited longer than anyone else to begin eating his food, so that he could savor the last faint taste of Percival’s blood on his lips, well. That was as it should be as well, and nothing anyone else needed to know.

 _Thank you_ , he thought, still light and incandescent with the morning’s relief.  

He watched Percival skim the thought from his head and give him a small private smile.  And then, finally, he bent his attention to his lunch and started to eat.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found [over on Tumblr too](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com/), where I am like 90% Hannibal and 10% Yuri on Ice but hey, I finally saw this movie, so maybe we'll squeeze a percent or two of Gifsets of that Amazing Coat into the Tumblr too, moving forward.


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